needles

March 7, 2010

I just watched the film Gia. Another tortured beauty destroys themselves with drugs. Yawn yawn yawn.

I used to kind of be a drug addict. Apart from weed, I never stuck with one drug for long, or did it often enough to be JUST addicted to that. I just liked being high. I used to party for days. Pretty much the only commonly available (? or at least well known) drug I haven’t done is heroin.

Weed is the only drug I’ve ever actively struggled to kick, because being a stoner is really, so easy. It makes you okay with being bored. And I used to be bored, a lot. I didn’t have a whole lot to my life. The reality is, I’ve made a lot of shitty choices, and wasted a lot of my potential, already.

My main other drug of choice has been acid. Acid saved my life in its own way. Two weeks before I ever took my second acid trip, I spent 4 days locked in my room with this random old man I met at a gay bar, who was far more fucked in the head than I was, even then. When he told me he had cocaine, I was so excited, it’s really expensive here, and it’s kind of a glamourous drug. But he told me he liked to shoot up, as you got far more out of it. He didn’t say I had to. But after a while, I got curious, and I did it.

To be honest, I can barely remember how it felt. I don’t even know that it actually felt that good. But something in it compels you to keep going and going. Things were really fucked up for me at that point – I was, literally, digging my own grave. My drug use kept escalating and escalating. I had been working as a prostitute in a brothel for about 6 months at that point. My best friends didn’t want anything to do with me anymore, and I refused to consider that maybe there was something wrong with me. Of course nothing was wrong with me – they were the ones who were overreacting. They were hypocrites; it’s not like they’d never taken drugs. I was on a bad path, to use a cliche, because the cliche fits perfectly.

Then, one day, I went to a festival, I took some acid.

And it’s like I woke up.

I saw where my actions were taking me, and it was terrifying. How did I get to the point where suddenly it was okay to stick needles in my arm with some stranger I met in a club?

All these lightbulbs went off in my head, like cartoon lightbulbs. I spent all day thinking and talking. It was like I finally saw the truth of my situation.

I have told this story to so many people, because my life – and attitude – changed entirely that day. I told my mother everything. Well, about the drugs, not the prostitution. I went and reconciled with my friends. I stopped taking drugs. I sought out a therapist, and I went back to university.

It’s not like that’s the whole story. It’s not. It’s taken a while to be in a (almost) completely healthy place. Because eventually I did start taking drugs again, and in some ways it even got worse than it did before that trip. Ever tried ice? DON’T.

Anyway – my point to all this is – or what started this rant – fuck glamour whores in movies who are so beautiful and tortured and fucked up. Because yeah, they do exist. And no one thinks digging a hole in your hand with a needle is glamourous or sexy. But honestly, I am SO BEYOND BORED with watching movies and reading books about beautiful drug addicts who eventually destroy themselves. It is the same old shit over and over again. And honestly, that world is just boring. I can’t do it anymore. I have no interest.

This doesn’t mean I will never take drugs again, because I almost certainly will. And okay, some people can keep a handle on their drug use. I can not. Not to the point of being a dirty aids junkie. But it kills a little bit of me, and I have found myself enjoying it less and less. The last time I took ecstasy, I wound up sketching out. I came back from the party I was at, and when my housemate came home with all these people for a kick on party, I wanted to die. I locked myself in my room and honestly all I wanted was for my boyfriend to come and hug me, but he was sick himself, and it just wasn’t on the cards. It was honestly one of the worst nights of my life. Not every time is like that now, but it’s been getting increasinsgly worse so… why bother?

Fuck drugs. I prefer being happy, healthy and in love. I don’t need drugs anymore, and I have no more interest in that world.

Advertisements

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

2 Responses to “needles”

the movie Gia is actually based on on the life of Gia Carangi. She was one of the first supermodels in the early 80s and a lot of the scenes were based on real events, like her rocking up to photoshoots nodding off- those photoshoots took place.

just saying…

sounds like you’ve been through a lot. im over drug taking too. not that i was addicted, but i went through a stage of loving my party drugs- coke and ecstasy. although with all my meds now, it barely does anything, so why bother

Yeah, I know – I did some digging around of the wikipedia variety after I watched it. But I guess my point is more.. I’ve heard her story, in various incantations, a million times before and it’s just at the point where it bores me. I think I’m just over drug movies. I don’t know, I obviously have my own hang ups when it comes to drugs. 🙂

That said, I thought it was a fairly average movie anyway. (albeit with a great performance from Angelina).